The Baroque music on tonight's program is (almost all) absolute music, that is music for music's sake, while the "Pictures at an Exhibition" is a program work, an attempt to capture in sound a "program', in this case the paintings by Viktor Hartmann.

We've come to associate the French word "Pathetique" with Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony...the original Russian word on the score translates closer to English "passionate' or 'emotional'. The 6th is Tchaikovsky's last symphony.